Lessons of a Zen Sand Garden

At the entrance to the gallery is a small Zen-style sand garden, which I rake faithfully-----well, OK, at least after each rainfall or after Cherub, the marmalade cat, has rolled and scratched his back in the warm sand. 


No, it's not what you think---he never messes, for he has great respect for things Zen. No, he rolls in my beautiful sand design when he is pissed off at me.  For example, when I won't let him into the gallery despite his plaintive cries at the glass door.

So he goes right to the Zen garden and rearranges things. 


The Buddha of Zen laughs and laughs. He likes all manner of feisty 'cats' of this world who challenge belief systems and do it with humour and without desecration. 

This garden is a faint reflection of my memory of the famous "dry" garden at Ryoan-ji (Peaceful Dragon Temple)  in Kyoto which is, yes, definitely raked daily by the monks.

Recently a lady stopped in to visit the gallery for the first time.  She has never traveled outside of the Province of Nova Scotia. This would be her first experience to visit an truly oriental environment and she was quite thrilled.  


As she entered, she pointed behind her to the Zen sand garden and said, "Your garden is coming along..."   


Being puzzled at her meaning, I answered in a typically polite and evasive Japanese fashion and agreed with her and thanked her for what obviously was a compliment. 


Inside the gallery, she was like a young  girl back in school on a field trip, marvelling at the beauty of objects and architecture alike.  And the kimonos!  She was overcome with excitement  to experience a taste of such an exotic culture, one that only in her dreams would she ever actually visit.


Finishing her green tea and wishing to express her joy and appreciation as she left, she commented once again on my sand garden.

Pointing to the carefully created, narrow rows in the sandy gravel, she left me a final compliment---- " Your garden will be  awfully lovely when your plants  begin coming up."

I thanked her kindly and sincerely for her visit----naive, uninformed, but a very pleasant person.


But then my mind began to churn. And in the background I could hear the Buddha of Zen laughing louder than ever---at me---his belly shaking.  


The question arose--- is there any room in the gardens of my preconceptions for more than just a rigid formula of sand and 5 stones? 


Like vegetables? 


Or humour?


How about a geisha napping? 

Of course, that must be done only with an authentic Zen meditation pillow...

(laughter...)

PS:  Seconds before I took this second image, a gentle wind blew the right sleeve of her kimono across her in a more feminine gesture.

This bunraku geisha definitely did not like the first poise...

TEA--a peace potion?

      Here is a quote and  a few thoughts that came to mind after friends and long-time customers  mentioned during a visit to the gallery this week that their son hopes to go into the tea business in their  country of Dubai United Arab Emirates.   

      "The most important pottery of the Cha-no-yu (tea-ceremony)  is first the Cha-ire (other name for tea-caddy) and then the Cha-wan (tea-bowl). It is said that among the military class the most precious possessions were first Tea-caddies, second writings and third swords. For this was the order in which they were presented by the Shogun to one he desired to honour."

-- A.L. Sadler.^[4]

16th cen. Japanese Momoyama-Era 'Cha-ire' (tea-caddy)

Chinese tea pot 1700s; 'Cha-ire' for coarse tea; modern 'Natsume' tea-caddy; 21st cen. tea pot. 

    Knowing that Japan, like my previous country the US, has had a history full of warfare, this statement is rather surprising, that a nation that lived by bushido  ('the way of the warrior') would have prized tea implements more highly than the symbol of their identity, the Japanese sword.  

    A grand old Japanese martial arts master, complete with wispy beard,  came to my gallery a few years ago. We sat in tea and conversation looking out over the ocean. He too surprised me when he said that within 50 years, martial arts would be no more, gone, no longer needed.  

  Times are a-changing.  I believe we are moving inextricably into an age of peace, beyond war-economics and the globe's control by shadowy power-brokering secret societies, into an Age where tea will be one of the compelling symbols of the dominance of civil society with its respect for diversity,  its celebration of commonality and its essential commitment to the principles of Gaia.  

   Perhaps tea is a Divine channel for a growing consciousness of Gaia in the minds of humanity? 

Tea, a peace potion?    

In the meantime, I know that it is delicious, and that Genmaicha, green tea with roasted rice, aka 'Popcorn Tea' is my favourite. So I serve it at the gallery every day....

ENJOYING JAPAN IN NOVA SCOTIA

Ohayo-gozaimasu!  

The easiest Japanese word to learn is "Ohayo",  'Good morning!'-- just like 'Ohio'.  (You can forget the 'gozaimasu' if you wish--it is technically required only if you are speaking to someone older than you.) 














And what a beautiful June morning it is here in Canada!--- bright warm sun, a slight crispness in the air and flowers in my Japanese gardens going crazy. 

I hope you don't mind if I slip  a few Japanese words into this blog. Most of the Canadian kids who live here along Nova Scotia's St. Mary's Bay---aka 'the French Shore'---are fluent both in French and English or are studying both, so they absorb languages like sponges.  I envy them.... 

  That 12th cen. Japanese garden we walked through earlier had a 'bakemono'----a

 popular term for 'monster' that you kids into anime and manga know well.

  My gardens here have visiting bees, their buzzing the single sweet sound on this quiet breeze except for the 'shakuhachi' (bamboo flute) music coming from the gallery.  

...ah, life is good....

A Samurai’s thousand-year-old act of compassion ---Retold in a woodblock print

Tadamori of the Taira Clan was at the top of his game. He just nailed one of the most plush and prestigious jobs in all of 11th-century Japan----a day-job as bodyguard for Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Go-Shirakawa was a nervous fellow, distrustful even of his own bodyguards. He required that all samurai guards leave his royal compound before sunset each day. 

One evening Go-Shirakawa required the services of a samurai guard. Tadamori happened to be on duty. The Emperor was going for an evening stroll with his entourage through unfamiliar forest-gardens. It was now almost dark and the Emperor was becoming rather frightened.

Suddenly out of the rain and fog appeared several pairs of threatening eyes. The Emperor jumped out of his royal skin and ordered Takamori to kill the terrifying demons immediately. 

Tadamori rushed at the apparition, his sword drawn, well trained to obey his Emperor’s every command.

About to strike, he saw that the ‘demon’ was actually a poor monk in a wild straw hat rushing about on his rounds, lighting the oil lamps in the stone lanterns of his temple’s forrest. 


The old man let out shrieks, and dropped his oil vessel, which broke with a great crash, adding to a really weird scene.

In the midst of his descending ‘katana’, Tadamori's well trained, obedient mind 'evolved'---ok, it revolted and began thinking on its own.  "Holy crap! I'm about to make a really messy decision...and over a 'me-shita-mono' "

Killing was not the problem. To kill the old man, or any human being that offended or threatened, was a samurai’s right.  Meeting 'lesser' ('me-shita-mono' 'below one's eyes') folk on the road, a samurai was judge, jury, and executioner. During a later age--the Tokugawa-era--there were better records kept of dead dogs than dead humans, especially if the dead were peasant farmers or the ‘subhuman’ ‘eta’ untouchables. Life was very tenuous for the people of the earth.

No, not killing but living was the problem. To spare the old monk’s 'worthless' life was to defy the Emperor’s command. Tadamori knew that such disobedience was a certain death sentence for himself--‘seppuku’.

Tadamori sheathed his sword. 


For him, it was probably one of those "what was I thinking?" moments. 


He now had two frightened men to contend with. 


He reassured the old monk that he had years left to live with many lanterns yet to light. 


 And so he turned to the other, his liege lord, explaining his disobedience and offered up his life in atonement.

We are aware of this act of compassion a thousand years later not just because one good man with immense courage and heart did what was right and true but because of a second act of compassion that day by another. Emperor Go-Shirakawa was himself a man who valued truth over power, forgiveness over ruinous revenge by an offended ego. 

The Emperor was moved by this samurai’s integrity. Not only did he forgive Tadamori his disobedience, but he made Tadamori his chief and full-time protector due to his intelligence and acts of kindness. Tadamori-no-Taira became the first samurai to be allowed to reside full time within the walls of the Emperor's quarters. 


Oh, a small footnote: Tadamori was also given the Emperor's consort as a wife and Tadamori eventually became the father of famed Kiyomori who then went on to make history.  Look him up, all you Japan-fans....


(Illustrated by an original woodblock print by Nobukazu Yosai, pupil of Chikanobu, struck off the original hand-carved cherrywood blocks; triptych, dated the 25th year of the Reign of Emperor Meiji, (l892).)

Marmalade Breakfast by a Buddhist Temple

4:30 AM--- I was riding my rather rusty mountain-bike through the deserted streets of Tokyo, headed for Arai-Yakushi Temple and its first-Sunday-of-the-month “Nomi-on-Ichi” ---flea market,  temple sale. 

A good sized furoshiki cloth was in my satchel in order to carry back anything I might buy.  Second only to an early look at all the interesting  junk and treasures that dealers and pickers might bring in from the countryside, I looked forward to my monthly “mooningu” breakfast with friends at a local coffee shop near the temple.  Awaiting me there was my private jar of Japanese-made Scotch-marmalade.

    Marmalade? In Japan? A private jar? Let me explain, using a very old Japanese custom. At tiny private bars, with only a few chairs or stools, member-customers each have their own bottle of Johnny Walker with their name on it up on a shelf behind the bar, a symbol of membership, purchased at an inflated price from the bar. Each drinks from his own bottle,  or serves a guest he brought along, or  a 'round to all “on the house”  if the owner was celebrating a promotion or his child just got into a prestigious kindergarten, thus on an auspicious path to Tokyo University and a good company job in the far future.

     But back to marmalade. Now I truly love a traditional Japanese breakfast, with raw egg and soy sauce over hot rice, eaten with salty nori. But my favorite Japanese breakfast is “mooningu”, Japan’s pronunciation of the English word ‘morning’, their term for “a perfect western breakfast”---strong coffee in a small cup, a hard-boiled egg still warm in the shell, and 2-inch thick hot buttered toast.  Mrs. Tanaka laughed when I asked permission to bring some marmalade for my toast next month.  The next month the jar went up on a shelf with my name on it.  She called it my Johnny Walker bottle, promising to guard it with her life.       

    

     440 AM---- I had a long ways to go, wanting to get there early.   I rode quickly by the corner where our neighborhood put out garbage and recyclables for collection but which now stood immaculately empty except for the plastic bottles of water to keep the feral cats from peeing on the cement wall;  Locked up my bike at Takadanobaba Station and jumped on the first Yamanote Line train of the morning; transferred  to the Seibu-Shinjuku Private Line; Now an hour later, walked the 5 minutes from the Araiyakushi-mae Station to the Buddhist temple grounds through narrow back streets lined with shops, the shop owners still sleeping in the small rooms above, their shuttered entrances just inches from the side of passing delivery trucks. In Tokyo space is money. The pickers were just unloading their wares onto their tarps on the swept dirt grounds under the cherry trees.

     

After greeting and chatting and laughing and dickering with the pickers,  I rushed---in Tokyo everyone rushes--to the coffee shop for my marmalade ‘mooningu’.  Tanaka-san-no-okusan had a long look on her face when she saw me enter. Bowing much deeper than usual, and in that most polite and apologetic manner for which the Japanese language is so  eminently suited,  she explained that some of her daily customers had developed an inexplicable and uncontrollable urge to eat ‘maamareedo’ on their toast.  “Moshiageraremasen,” she said,  showing me the empty marmalade jar.  

    4:30 AM--- a month later. With extra jars of ‘maamareedo’ in my pack for all, I once again headed for my favorite temple and temple sale and the Tanakas’ coffee shop.

Tom

Araiyakushi Temple is as serene and beautiful for meditation on a weekday as it is exciting on market day.
3 old film-photos mechanically spliced together, now framed here at home in Nova Scotia.

Shocking Canadian lessons from Japan’s Disaster

With this Letter to the Editor below, I begin my first blog. My travels began many years before, from Ohio to Old Scotland, my much-loved land of kippers and marmalade, for a year studying geology at red-robed 15th cen. St. Andrews Univ. on the North Sea.  My wanderings later took me to Taiwan/Hongkong for a unique 2 year-introduction to that part of the northeast Asian family. And eventually to Japan, the land of sushi, for 20 years of work in human rights.  And now full circle, thanks to loved ones, I am most happily and gratefully settled here in God's own Nova Scotia, Canada, New Scotland, enjoying this morning's breakfast with some of a Scottish neighbor's ‘Dark Whiskey Marmalade’. Though half a world and years away from my Northeast Asia, she too is close to my heart and life-style, as I tend my Japanese Antique and Woodblock Print Gallery and, on occasion, make sushi.  And so, if you stumble on this blog, I hope you can find some flavours you enjoy--salty or sweet, east or west, sushi or marmalade--among these rambling notes of this wandering monk. 

Shocking Canadian lessons from Japan’s Disaster    

       I have personally known the anxiety the Japanese live with daily,  the  fear of an impending  and inevitable earthquake under your feet, wondering what to do if  “The Big One” happens this very  moment....

     Now it has happened.  And since 7:00 AM March 11, when my dog woke me up suddenly here far away in Nova Scotia as if himself sensing the earthquake,  I have watched with awe at the capacity of the Japanese people to deal with such a crisis on their vulnerable islands, my home for 20 years.

    After leaving Japan, it took me a few years to overcome my acquired fear of Japan’s quakes and then to relax in the safety and beauty of living in Canada, in western Nova Scotia on the shores of St. Mary's Bay.    

       Those Japanese who survived the earthquake and tsunami  are now experiencing unique and even more disturbing types of after-shocks---man-made ones both immoral and political. These after-shocks are the on-going revelations of  lies and coverups by their government about the true dangers of Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors, specifically regarding the Fukushima disaster (e.g. failed tests just weeks before the quake--hidden, uncorrected) and its real impact on people’s health.

       The 126 million human beings who populate Japan today  have been culturally conditioned to believe and obey their government.  And Japan’s post-war political leaders have, by and large, taken full advantage of this. These politicians  follow a similar philosophy to that of the founder of the U.S. Neo-Con Movement, Leo Strauss of the Univ. of Chicago, who taught that the need for perpetual deception of a nation’s people by its leaders is crucial because citizens need to be led by powerful rulers to tell them what is good for them.

         Japan’s disaster has shocked my peaceful Nova Scotia life, awakening in me  new fears based on two facts that I had so far chosen to ignore:  First, I, along with 150,000 other citizens, live within 80 km. of the old, ailing Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, straight across the beautiful Bay of Fundy,  well within the death or disfigurement zone both of Chernobyl and--when the truth be finally told--of Fukushima.   

      Secondly, Prime Minister Harper,  just 12 hours before Linda Keen was scheduled to appear before a Commons committee in Ottawa, fired and banished Ms. Keen, the head of Canada’s nuclear safety watchdog, for refusing to start up a nuclear reactor she deemed unsafe. 

      Suddenly Japan doesn’t seem so distant and my Canada doesn’t seem so safe.  And I’m wondering---as the Japanese are wondering about their leaders---who the Harper government is actually servicing by such actions as firing my nuclear watchdog? Certainly not you and me who elected them in our democratic system, a democracy which itself suddenly doesn’t seem so secure.  

       Once again as in my Japan days, I feel the ground shifting under my feet. And I  don’t  like it one bit.

japanesewoodblockprints.ca

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